Mileage tax is moronic - or perhaps it's Orwellian

Even at 40 cents a gallon, drivers pay just pennies a mile under a gas tax.Honda

This article reports on a move by an Oregon legislator to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

That problem is a drop in tax revenues that might occur as people move to more efficient vehicles.

The reason this is not a problem is simple: If the revenues drop, just raise the gas tax. The consumer will still be paying the same amount per mile.

If, for example, the fleet averages 20 miles per gallon and the gas tax is 20 cents a gallon, then the driver pays a penny a mile to use the roads - not a bad deal at all compared to the tolls we pay here in Jersey, which can be more than 20 cents a mile.

Now let's say the fleet average goes up to 40 mpg. Just raise the tax to 40 cents a gallon. The driver still pays a penny a mile.

What about electric cars and plug-in hybrids? They wouldn't exist without subsidies. And it makes no sense to tax a car on the state level that is subsidized on the federal level.

Besides, diesels are a lot more efficient in the real world. Check this article to see how a VW diesel hit almost 80 mpg.

The legislator said she believes that since vehicles are only going to get more fuel-efficient, her bill and advocacy for a VMT tax are an attempt to get in front of the problem of dropping gas-tax revenues.

"I worry that if you wait very long, you’ll have a bunch of these highly fuel-efficient vehicles on the road,” she told MSN Autos. “And you’ll either have to grandfather them in or you surprise people: 'I bought this car to save money on gas and now you’re taxing me?’"

The solution to that problem is simple: Just drop the dumb idea of mileage taxes. There is no way to administer them on a statewide level, for the obvious reason that cars from other states can and do use the roads in Oregon as well.

And of course cars from Oregon would travel outside that state yet still pay the tax to Oregon.

That means the only way to administer the tax is to outfit every car with some sort of satellite-monitoring system. And that is really just a thinly disguised attempt by government to track all of our movements - assuming of course the NSA isn't already doing that through our cellphones.

No thanks. If the price to avoid that is letting some guy with an electric car get a free ride, that's fine with me.